Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
But it has been interesting....
Certainly I don't know what there is for you two to "discuss" — you can't even get on the same page. Also certainly I do not blame you for this, dearest sister in Christ.
The "fact" is, kosta has a rather peculiar mental tick. It goes something like this:
(1) There is no such thing as truth.
(2) But if there is, we can't find out anything about it. So we can't "prove" it. Since we can't "prove" it, therefore it can never be a "fact."
(3) Since it cannot be a "fact," then loop back to (1).
Kosta evidently wants to go by "facts" alone. But since he either denies or is extremely skeptical about the reality of truth, one wonders what standard, what criterion he uses to "prove" his "facts."
He keeps harping on pink unicorns on Jupiter, maintaining that they are akin to beliefs about God. It is probably true that, "factually," there are no pink unicorns on Jupiter. (BTW, how do we "prove" that?)
Yet kosta has established the "fact" that unicorns really do exist in some sense — by using them as a stick to beat you with. They exist in his imagination. Not to mention the imaginations of other human beings over the ages. In this sense, they have existed for a very long time, usually as a symbol of purity. (Though perhaps our friend kosta does not care much about either symbols or purity, because of their spiritual/religious overtones.)
But of course, this validation can only be made by means of historical sources — not by direct observation, but by "testimony" — and kosta has already told us on many occasions that testimony is unreliable and therefore unacceptable to him as evidence.
When you boil it all down, it seems kosta doubts everything in the world except what he can directly observe. In this sense, he is the measure of his own reality. So one imagines historical "facts" are useless to him.
No wonder you and he cannot get on the same page! You do not live in the same world!
Nonetheless, even these pink unicorns on Jupiter, supposed "non-facts," point us back to God. But I do not find this surprising. As a Christian, I joyfully acknowledge that all things in heaven and on earth point us back to God in some way.
Kosta, for whatever reason, will not look in that direction. He prefers to run the loop of (1) to (3) incessantly.
I don't know why.
JMHO FWIW
Thank you so very much, dearest sister in Christ, for the simply magnificent series of essays you've posted to this thread!
All thanks and praise be to God!
The topic on hand is that DNA variation is, despite your ignorant objections, introduced due to germline mutations passed on from parent to child. This is the EXACT SAME mechanism that leads to intra and inter species change.
There is no “micro” DNA change that only happens within species, and “macro” DNA changes that happen only during speciation.
When two populations are separated, changes would accumulate the longer the two populations remain apart. Eventually the differences can grow to such an extent that the two populations no longer look the same and can (in most cases) no longer reproduce fertile offspring.j
What is going to prevent such a process? If we see that a population is changed in DNA by 0.001% in 20 years, what is going to prevent a 1% change in 20,000 years? Wishful thinking?
The existence of Australopithocine is only a guess? Well yes, such a thing was “guessed at” by evolutionary theory, and the fossil data supports such a prediction.
The Big Bang is not axiomatically the beginning, except in the minds of Intelligent Design crowd, a man-made rationalization. The science obtained evidence that an event took place but not necessarily the first of its kind.
Likewise there is no evidence of the "end." The universe is not slowing down as it should be, but is actually accelerating...and expanding. Maybe the "end" will be a super giant black whole that will chow down everything and then cough it all up in another spectacular Big Bang, starting the process anew as it may have eternally.
How can we know for sure when, compared to the clock of the universe, our existence is less than that of a microbe on earth. What's a whole aeon to mankind is not even a millisecond to the Universe.
On the other hand, the ID crowd may be right: God created the world just as the Bible says. But no one really knows for sure who is right, do we? My opposition to a creationist theory is not so much the knowledge that it is "wrong" as much as it is an opposition to human extremism.
It's one thing to speculate and muse over these things as mind-boggling uncertainties and possibilities and possibilities; it's an altogether different thing when some groups monopolize one theory and turn it into "official truth."
The best always have shared your philosophy here. True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all. - Socrates; We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children. The real nature of things we shall never know. - Albert Einstein; As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious. - Albert Schweitzer
Thank you for beginning this up. Knowledge is the greatest human "humulifier".
Say you are the first human in malaria country to derive the sickle cell anemia gene in one copy in your genome. You pass it on to half of your offspring. Those who have one copy of the mutation survive malaria better than those without it. As such natural selection favors your offspring in malaria country, and all your children with the gene go on to have many children and grandchildren.
Eventually those grandchildren intermarry - and suddenly an individual can get the sickle cell anemia gene from BOTH parents, and develop sickle cell anemia (and most likely die), have only one copy and survive malaria, or have no copy and probably die of malaria.
So you should be able to see by this example that there is absolutely NO REQURIEMENT AT ALL that the same mutation happen twice independently before it can be passed on (and proliferated) through a population.
Creationists. They don't know much, and what they think they know just isn't so!
Indeed.
Great advice, dear brother in Christ.
Which I take to mean: Stop fighting. Stop denying the obvious....
Just my two cents worth, FWIW.
"Must have a cause" is not a proof that it must.
It's true the argument stands or falls on the truth of a cause and effect universe. However, if you are going to posit it's not true, you need to explain what we observe everywhere in the universe, as cause and effect, really is. Take any example - a billiard ball compressing a cushion - and explain what that event is if it is not cause and effect. Not saying that you can't, but that there's a hole in this objection without it.
The first cause is a perfect example that we can believe something is without one, an exception.
But we are not imagining the first cause as part of the universe (that we observe as cause and effect). The argument is that all things in motion (in the largest sense) must have cause and effect. The first cause is not in motion, is not changing, etc. - and therefore without need of cause.
We cannot imagine the same thing for the universe that we observe as in motion under cause and effect - without explaining away cause and effect as in your first observation.
How does he know it's God?
Personally, my view is that if you can fully comprehend it, it's not God; that first cause could only be a partial answer. However, answering in terms of the argument: If we are describing something that is eternal, changeless (i.e.,perfect) uncaused, immortal, self-existing, independent… we're pretty close to the describing the same thing Christians call God. You're correct though that the argument itself could be used without the term or hold my view that it's still incomplete, or that it does not describe/prove everything Christianity means by "God."
Thanks very much for your reply.
More great advice!!!
How I love the testimony of the beloved Apostle! It resonates, mind and spirit....
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your "closing remark!"
Except that Latin became the non-spoken only in the 20th century. The Croatian parliament, for example, used spoken Latin in the early 19th century. The Ragusa (Dubrovnik) republic on the Adriatic coast was a Latin-speaking community until Napoleon destroyed it in the early 19th century. The Vatican conducted all its business in spoken Latin all the way up to the Vatican II in 1964 and for years to come, etc.
For centuries, Latin was the lingua franca of Western Europe in universities and other institutions, the way English is today a universal language. There simply is no documentation as to the extent of spoken Hebrew, so it is pointless to try to guess to what extent it was spoken, if it was spoken at all. Today, the Vatican still uses all official correspondence in Latin, but hardly anyone in the Catholic Church speaks it.
Again, whether Jesus and Nicodemus spoke Hebrew or Chaldee is irrelevant. The pun that supposedly caused Nicodemus to misunderstand Jesus is possible only in Greek, not in Hebrew or Aramaic. Which raises valid suspicion if that conversation ever took place.
To equate the process of genetic change between parent and child with the theoretical genetic evolutionary change from one species to another is erroneous.
With respect to the latter, the larger process theoretically involves natural selection and speciation. And as you point out, it involves a significant variation in time. So you see it is very different from intra-species change.
I think we've been here before. A repeating cycle of cause and effect does nothing to affect the argument of a single cycle. You still have the same problem and argument, only for multiple cycles.
All this still applies to an open or closed (repeating) universe.
But no one really knows for sure who is right, do we?
In my opinion, no; and I think it's a safe assumption.
it's an altogether different thing when some groups monopolize one theory and turn it into "official truth."
Though I'm not what's termed a "creationist" and I don't adhere to the full ID position (I believe it makes the same kinds of mistakes in category errors), I feel the same way about scientism. So as long as as both and all sides stick to their areas of study, maintain some sort of epistemological coherence, I'm fine with the debate. We're discussing the large questions of existence and meaning and I think that is a healthy necessity given the power of human beings - for good or ill.
Knowledge is the greatest human "humulifier".
Amen.
Oh so beautifully said, dear padre!
So if a 0.001% in DNA is observed in a population over 20 years (all from germline mutations passed on from parent to child), what is going to prevent a 1% DNA change over 20,000 years (all from germline mutations passed on from parent to child)?
If we have two separate populations that change at that rate, what is going to prevent a 2% change from accumulating between the two populations over that amount of time?
You are correct, Sister B-B. Especially, stop fighting Christ; stop denying the obvious about Christ; surrender to Christ.
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all. - Socrates;
We know nothing at all. All our knowledge is but the knowledge of school children. The real nature of things we shall never know. - Albert Einstein
As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious. - Albert Schweitzer
I had no idea they believed that too. I suppose you'd say they also had a "peculiar mental tick."
When you boil it all down, it seems kosta doubts everything in the world except what he can directly observe. In this sense, he is the measure of his own reality.
Or, to put it another way, kosta takes everything with a grain of salt, especially statements of people who claim the invisible, unprovable, pink-unicorn-like "facts" of their own inner reality, as the only measure of truth. You are right, kosta is skeptical of such Gnostic fabrications.
No wonder you and he cannot get on the same page! You do not live in the same world!
IMHO, this irreconcilable divide originates from the strangely successful though tragic philosophic derailing perhaps starting with Descartes – namely, the view that a mechanistic universe can be decoupled from the mind, soul or spirit. The Newtonian paradigm was, after all, very successful for centuries in spurring scientific progress for the good of mankind.
But then came the twentieth century and along with it the discovery that Newton’s physics fail at the very large scale (Relativity) and the very small scale (Quantum Mechanics) simply because – tada – the observer is in fact part of the observation. Rest in Peace, Descartes.
For instance, space/time is relativistic and if a physicist is looking for a particle, that is what he will see. But if he is looking for a wave, that is what he will see (wave/particle duality.)
And more than this, Information Theory has shown that the Newtonian/Bacon reduction of causes to material and efficient cause can no longer hold. (Rosen) Formal cause and final cause are back on the table.
Therefore, whenever I am engaged in a debate (whether theology, math or science) with a materialist (atheist, agnostic or whatever) – I announce right up front that I will not yield control of the rules of engagement – and that includes the control of the dictionary – because “fact” “belief” “truth” “proof” "reality" and more are reduced by my correspondent's worldview.
Acquiring a protective factor against malaria is not speciation.
The requirement we’re talking about is that speciation must occur by the same genetic changes in at least two individuals.
Speciation is the key. For evolutionary theory it’s a very big problem.
Thank God for the Apostle John!
The most significant problem is that genetic change is mostly of an entropic nature, resulting in nicks and dents in the genome. It doesn’t move the genome towards higher or better functioning.
I mentioned it only in reference to the "beginning". Evidence suggest it was an event so many aeons ago. We don't know if it was the "beginning" of all existence or simply a recycling of an eternal universe. We know nothing of what existed before, if anything existed.
The argument is that all things in motion (in the largest sense) must have cause and effect. The first cause is not in motion, is not changing, etc. - and therefore without need of cause.
Well, if all that exists is caused, and God exists, he must be caused. And if he is caused, then he is not the first cause.
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